Reflection Blogging: CYOA (Hyperlinked Environments)
It took me a minute to figure out how I wanted to go about this reflection blog. I was most inspired by the articles on technology and digital skills in the school library category of CYOA, particularly this quote from Park’s 2016 article 8 digital skills we must teach our children:
“Children are using digital technologies and media at increasingly younger ages and for longer periods of time. They spend an average of seven hours a day in front of screens — from televisions and computers, to mobile phones and various digital devices.”
This made me reflect on the digital habits of the kids who visit my library, as my library continues to see screen time go up and book circulation go down.
Every year my colleagues and I discuss how to increase book circulation with our middle school and upper school students. We invite the English teachers to bring their classes to the library and promote popular and new books, we keep up with the latest releases and we try to cater to requests and get extra copies of books that suddenly soar in popularity due to BookTok and word of mouth.
We usually see an uptick in book circulation at the beginning of the year from all the new sixth graders who are exploring our library for the first time, and then after homework picks up, circulation decreases again. Which, I totally get. I do not remember having a lot of time to read for fun in middle and high school.
For context, my K-12 school has two libraries- one for TK-5th, and one for 6th-12th. My assistant position allows me to work in both libraries, so I had the unique experience of getting to know a lot of the fifth grade students last year and then welcoming them to their new library as sixth graders this year. I was really excited to welcome this particularly awesome group of readers into our space, and for the most part a lot of them visit the library and still check out books!
While I love seeing the students come in, I can’t help but notice there are a couple of boys who have not set foot in the library despite being daily visitors in fifth grade. I’m bummed, I was really looking forward to showing them our collection of sports non-fiction, historical fiction, and whatever new genres and stories they wanted to explore.
However, sixth grade is when students are required to start having laptops for class. Both of the boys I mentioned have older sisters who are also awesome readers, and one of the girls told my colleagues and me that her brother now spends all his time on his computer. My hope is that he has not stop reading altogether. He likely has books at home to read, maybe even a Kindle or other reading device? Maybe he uses the public library? Still, it is sad to lose a regular library visitor, even an anticipated one.
I know there are ways to embrace technology in the library and to encourage a love of libraries in ways besides books, and I believe my library is doing what we can. We offer e-books and audiobooks, fun programming (some that is reading and book-centric, some that is not), crafts and games, and allow academic computer gaming. The computer games are approved by teachers and administrators- the librarians are not really in a position to promote or allow videogames in the library or on campus in general.
I know patrons come and go, I just hope those boys are still reading even if they aren’t visiting the library, and I still hope to see them visit occasionally, whether it’s a class visit or on their own.